October 26, 2004

Greetings. This morning on KGO-AM radio in the San Francisco Bay area, host Ronn Owens was interviewing FCC Chairman Michael Powell when Howard Stern called in. The resulting exchange was fascinating to say the least.

October 20, 2004

Greetings. In a remarkable interview with CNN, well-known conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has told of a meeting he had with President G.W. Bush shortly before the ongoing Iraq War.

Robertson noted that Bush seemed supremely confident of himself, and that Bush inexplicably insisted that there would be no casualties in the upcoming war in Iraq -- a statement with which Robertson strongly disagreed.

The White House has confirmed that the meeting took place, but says that Robertson's characterization of Bush's comments is false.

Here's a short audio clip where Pat Robertson tells of this enlightening conversation.

I wonder, who is more likely to not be telling the truth about this meeting -- a religious conservative like Robertson, or the Bush White House?

October 17, 2004

Greetings. Looking for an effective way to confuse an audience full of your supporters? George W. Bush has this one down pat.

At a rally yesterday in Florida, George proclaimed that "we will not have an all-volunteer army" -- then he continued plowing along with the rest of his speech until his audience's confusion got his attention and he reworded himself.

Just another in the long line of mangled Bushisms? Or a Freudian slip, perhaps? Judge for yourself by listening to this brief audio clip.

October 11, 2004

Greetings. Russian space researchers are planning an experiment starting in 2006 which will lock volunteers in a sealed module (with fixed amounts of food, oxygen, and water) for 500 days to simulate a trip to Mars. As might be imagined, NASA researchers are also interested in the results of this effort.

However, fans of classic science-fiction already know some of the risks involved -- we've seen variations of this plot before!

In the 1959 pilot episode of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone" called Where is Everybody?, an astronaut hallucinates a bizarre, uninhabited town while locked in an isolation module acting as a simulated spacecraft for an Air Force experiment.

Even closer to the Russian plan, during the second season of the original "The Outer Limits" in the episode Counterweight (1963), a group of volunteers is sealed in a spacecraft mockup for a long duration interplanetary flight simulation (along with an alien interloper, as they eventually learn).

It should be interesting to see how the Russian experiment turns out. Whether it's "between light and shadow, between science and superstition" or "from the inner mind to the outer limits" -- we wish them well.

But watch out for those mutated-plant aliens! And keep that panic button handy!

October 09, 2004

Greetings. Leave it to the state that spawned G.W. Bush to be considering textbooks that may only briefly (if at all) mention the use of condoms to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. The pressure is on to tell children that only abstinence and "rest" will protect them.

This of course flys in the face of actual human behavior throughout history, but it does demonstrate once again that the troglodytes are alive and well in the Lone Star State. But of course we've had plenty of proof of that already, especially during this election season.

Texas' influence on the national textbook market is immense. The result could be that such idiotic attitudes may impact textbooks available to children throughout the country. This would include places where educators actually care more about health than with catering to religious fanatics -- those persons who would impose their brand of anti-science morality on us all, regardless of how many people end up dying as a result.